Australian Electoral Commission starts moving out of NEXTDC

The Australian Electoral Commission is moving out of NEXTDC and into a CDC Data Centres facility, with plans to have the migration completed before the next federal election can be called.

The commission signed an $8 million contract with CDC Data Centres on July 2, that covers the next 10 years through to 2034, with possible extensions to 2036.

It overlaps by six months a previous decade-long deal that the AEC had with NEXTDC, which is due to expire at the end of 2024 - and iTnews has confirmed a migration out of that facility is now underway.

“The AEC’s current contract with NEXTDC in Bruce [a suburb of Canberra] was set to conclude as of December 11 2024 and therefore required a new market approach to be undertaken,” an AEC spokesperson told iTnews.

“The timing of the approach to market was driven by the potential that the 24/25 federal election could be called in the second half of 2024, which would prevent any migration activities beyond September 2024 without generating significant risk to election IT operations."

The AEC spokesperson said the timing of the data centre migration is "all about ensuring our IT election ready systems remain safe, stable and secure.”

CDC Data Centres won the contract through a competitive tender to participants of a Digital Transformation Agency-assembled panel.

The AEC spokesperson told iTnews that it is “taking the opportunity” presented by the move to a new facility to also “downsize” its on-premises infrastructure.

Its data centre hosts core WAN infrastructure, unspecified “internal business systems” and election delivery services.

The intent is to make “further investments into cloud capabilities” as the AEC shrinks its data centre space requirements.

iTnews understands that the AEC has set itself four key milestones for the facility move that are to be delivered before October.

These are the preparation of the new CDC facility, establishment of core carriage services, migration of AEC infrastructure, and completion of assurance activities for the 2024/25 federal election, including disaster recovery testing and high availability failovers.

In the past few years, the AEC has worked through a once-in-a-generation modernisation of its core election systems.